How To Make Your Values Matter
What’s Inside this Book
Welcome to my book about how to make your values matter throughout the chapters of your WorkLife story. Here is a preview of what’s inside, along with the main ideas and the meaning behind these.
WorkLife is our life at work, where we spend one third of our lives. It is also the impact our work has on our life outside of work, and the impact our life outside of work has on our work. All areas of our life in and out of work are so intrinsically linked, they cannot be separated, nor do I believe should they. I believe WorkLife needs to be considered holistically.
Your values are your beliefs about what is important to you in your WorkLife. They can change over time. They form the core principles that help guide you through life.
In this book I tell two stories:
1. A WorkLife Change is Needed when Values are Out of Sync: Ted’s story of how he went from Nuclear Research Engineer to Urbanisation Planner, in order to live his WorkLife with passion, purpose and pride.
2. Staying True To Your Values When Times Get Tough: Linda’s story of how she had been forced out of work by a set of destructive values, the negative impact this had on her mental wellbeing, and how she needed to ensure this never happened again.
I share the exercises that helped Ted and Linda work through their challenging situations to resolve their dilemmas. I present these as the following assignments for you to work through:
Discover or Rediscover Your WorkLife Values Assignment
This assignment is to help you think about your key values. This greater awareness is valuable for when you consider what type of job role, sector and work environment will suit you best, along with what is important to you in your life outside of work that you need to take into consideration.
Develop a Practice of Continuous Self-Feedback Assignment
This assignment is to help you to continuously strive towards living your WorkLife true to your values. Giving yourself in-the-moment self-feedback will allow you to understand the good and bad reactions you have in different situations, and towards different people. This will enable you to make the best decisions based on what is important to you.
Develop a Practice of Insightful and Effective Self-Questioning Assignment
This assignment is to help you realise the importance of using questions to get to what really matters for you at every stage of your WorkLife, and to then use the information that comes to you through the answers to make that happen.
Staying True to Your Values when Times Get Tough Assignment
This assignment is to help you take an objective standpoint while honouring your values in making the best and right decision for you when faced with a dilemma that is in conflict with your values.